


And From Her Lips

by Lina (lookslikelove)



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:06:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookslikelove/pseuds/Lina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nights like tonight that make him wish that he could just get out of his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And From Her Lips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roxie Ann (pluvial_poetry)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluvial_poetry/gifts).



It’s foolish. Worse than that, it’s moronic. It goes against everything he’s ever been taught or told, against the values that his mother told him to cling to. He can’t forget. Forgetting will lead to more trouble than he’s already known, might let the world end just a little bit sooner.

No. He can’t risk it. Nothing was worth that.

So he takes a deep breath. Counts the specks on the ceiling. Repeats the mantas that his mother has drilled into his head.

The clock reads 4:08, crawling slowing towards 4:09 as he watches it. This is pointless. He’s going to make himself crazy thinking about these things instead of sleeping. He wants to sleep. He needs to sleep, for reasons larger than the fact that the end of the world could strike at any minute. He’s got a chemistry test in the morning and sure, chem is easy and he might not need to know how to do stoichiometry in the future, but that’s no reason to just bail. College probably won’t be in his future, the way it was for most kids his age (he doesn’t even know if there will be universities when SkyNet gets on a roll; he hasn’t thought to ask). Good grades are something tangible (not stellar, not noteworthy, just ordinary amounts of good) which is exactly what he wants in a world where he is barely more than a fake name on a piece of paper most days.

John tenses. Then relaxes. He balls his hands into fists, half-sitting up to punch the pillow before rolling onto his stomach. Face down in the pillow, he lets out a grunt. It’s uncomfortable, his warm breath is being pushed back in his face, but he is positively not thinking about any of that. At all.

That’s when the insomnia kicks in. Suddenly he’s wide-awake and there is nothing he can do about it.

Times like this he wonders if the future him created Cameron to torture him. He knows better than that, knows that John Connor Savior of the World did not make Cameron. He merely modified her. Programmed her into the person – no _creature_ that she currently is. Made her want to protect him, gave her compassion, made her all that she is. Was that John aware of the thoughts that sometimes run through his head? Does he know that for the briefest of moments he forgets that Cameron is actually a killing machine, a harbringer of destruction and doom? That he believes, even for the smallest fraction of time that she is a real person. That she feels in the most human of ways. That it isn’t all programming.

But aren’t all people programmed in some way? He saw a documentary on that, probably at school or when he was killing time between moments when his life was actively on the line.

Maybe this is meant to be some sort of lesson. A reminder of forgiveness or to teach him that looks can be deceiving.

Maybe she’s a gift. Maybe that John, his future-self (if everything goes wrong as planned) felt something else for her or for a girl just like her. Cameron might be more Allison Young than he is aware of. This might be a gift of remembering, to know that love can be had and lost and re-gifted all in one pretty go.

He can’t think like that. It’s making him crazy.

Nights like tonight that make him wish that he could just get out of his head.

There’s a gentle knock on the door.

“John?”

He lifts his head up from the pillow, bleary-eyed as he makes out the person standing there. He knows instinctively that it cannot be his mother. Sarah would wake him up shouting, at a full run if something was the matter. Otherwise she wouldn’t wake him up at all.

“John?” The repetition of his name as she steps into room tells him it is exactly who he thought it was.

Cameron.

Pushing himself up on his elbow he looks at her, confused as to why she is there. She sits on the foot of his bed, staring at him intently.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, voice cracking.

“I had a bad dream.”

He laughs, he can’t help it. There’s something absurd about a robot (girl) telling him that she (it) had a bad dream.

“Do robots even dream?” His mind instantly skips to _Blade Runner_ which he watched once when he was eleven and his mother had left him alone. Sarah doesn’t like movies about machines (something about having lived with enough of them trying to kill her to not want to waste any more time on fake ones), which put a slightly cramp on his movie watching.

“No. I am programmed to go through updates and maintenance with an awareness for what is going on during the hours when others are asleep.” Her answer is formulaic, expected and it just makes him smile wider.

“That’s what I thought. So how can you have a bad dream?”

“I’m not certain.” There’s confusion on her face, real and not imagined. It blows his mind, the idea that a robot can be confused. Can talk to him about a bad dream like it actually had one. “I just did.”

He sits up, at a loss for what to do so he places his hand on her exposed shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it? I think that might help or something.”

She stares at him before shaking her head. “No.”

Her skin is warm under his fingers. It is nothing like the cool metal that makes up her skeleton, her frame, her core. It feels human and he knows that if she is cut then she will bleed. She might not cry out in pain, but she’ll bleed which is enough to make him want to forget that she’s anything less than human a little more.

“Then what do you want to do?”

“I want you to make me feel better.”

She must have picked this up from some sort of television show, just like she picked up the ballet. That’s the only thing that he can think of to explain this scenario or what he does next.

He kisses her. She’s stiff, but then she softens, kissing him back. She must have picked that up from others as well. There is no way that this is part of his programming. But she’s soft and hard under his hands, which his slides up so that he’s touching her face. Her hands are on his shoulders and then his back. He runs his hand down her side, cupping her breast still kissing her and he swears that she sighs.

There’s one thought (or several) running through his mind as he pushes her back onto his bed. He kisses his way down her neck, rocking slightly against her and she moans playing the part like it’s second nature. Her hand is going for his boxers and he can feel himself going hard as he moves up to kiss her mouth once more. It all feels so wrong and at the same time so right. It might just be hormones but at that moment he would swear that she was made for him, for this.

That’s the only explanation he can think of. He’s moving faster, his hands on her and vice versa. He’s going…going…

 

John sits bolt upright in bed. His heart is racing, head pounding slightly. He’s sweating. It’s like he’s been running thousand miles in no time at all.

He looks around the room, trying to figure out what time it is. The clock reads 4:19 for a moment before sliding over to 4:20. That can’t be right. It has to be later.

One look around the room, at the lack of crumpled sheets or any other sign that Cameron had been there tells him what he already knew to be true.

It had all been a dream.


End file.
